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The Natick Resolution, or, Resistance to slaveholders the right and duty of southern slaves and northern freemen (XHTML)
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2006-06-05 17:14
A militant antislavery tract calling for violent overthrow of slavery, published by Henry Clarke Wright in Boston in 1859. Digitized by the Antislavery Literature Project.
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<div class="Section1">
<p class="MsoBodyText">The Natick Resolution, or, Resistance to slaveholders the
right and duty of southern slaves and northern freemen</p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>Henry Clarke
Wright</span></b><a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1" title="" id="_ftnref1"><span
class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style='color:black'><span
class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman";
color:black'>[1]</span></span></span></span></a></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;text-autospace:none'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>This is an annotated text of <i>The Natick Resolution</i>,
published by its author in Boston in 1859. Original spelling, punctuation and
page citations have been retained; minor typographic errors have been
corrected.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;text-autospace:none'><b><span
style='font-size:10.0pt'>This electronic edition has been prepared for the
Antislavery Literature Project, Arizona State University, a public education
project working in cooperation with the EServer, Iowa State University. Digitization has been supported by a grant from the Institute for Humanities
Research, Arizona State University.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><b><span style='font-size:10.0pt'>Editorial annotation by
Joe Lockard. Digitization by April Brannon. All rights reserved by the Antislavery
Literature Project. Permission for non-commercial educational use is granted.</span></b><br clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
</p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 1]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black'>________________</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO
JOHN BROWN.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>TWO LETTERS
TO GOVERNOR WISE.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO
THE RICHMOND ENQUIRER.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO
CAPT. AVIS.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><b><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO
HENRY WILSON. </span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO WM. LLOYD GARRISON.</span></b></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center'><b><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>__________________</span></b></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[unnumbered page 2]</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 3]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>THE NATICK RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO JOHN
BROWN.</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Natick</span><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>, </span><span style='color:black'>Mass.</span><span
style='color:black'>, Nov. 21st, 1859. </span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Capt. John Brown</span><span
style='color:black'>:</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'> Dear and Honored Friend</span><span
style='color:black'>—(for the friend of the slave is my dear and honored
friend)—A very large, and enthusiastic meeting of the citizens of this town,
without regard to political or religious creeds, was held last evening, for
the purpose of considering and acting upon the following resolution:—</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Whereas, Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God;
therefore, </span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:
none'><i><span style='color:black'>Resolved, </span></i><span style='color:
black'>That it is the right and duty of the slaves to resist their masters, and
the right and duty of the people of the North to incite them to resistance, and
to aid them in it.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> This resolution was adopted by the meeting without a
dissenting voice. Though a United States Senator (Henry Wilson) and a United
States Postmaster were present, yet not a voice was raised against it by them,
nor by any one else, nor against the sentiments it contains. The meeting
appointed me a committee to forward their resolution to you. In compliance with
their request, and with the promptings of my own heart, I forward it.</span></p>
<p><span style='color:black'> The resolution, as you will
see, simply affirms the right and duty of resistance, not merely to slavery as
a principle or an abstraction, but to slaveholders, the living embodiment of
slavery. The South embody slavery and resistance to</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p><span style='color:black'>[page 4]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center'><span
style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>THE NATICK RESOLUTION</span></p>
<p><span style='color:black'>liberty in their whole life. We
would arouse the North to embody liberty and resistance to slavery in their
whole life. Wherever the people of the south live, whether in domestic, social,
ecclesiastical, political or commercial life, they embody <i>death to liberty</i>.
We would stir up the people of the North to embody <i>death to slavery</i> wherever they live. In whatever relations they live, we would incite them to
embody liberty as the South does slavery. <i>Death to slavery</i> should, and
will, ere long, be the watchword of every domestic and social circle, of every
political and religious party, and of every literary and commercial
establishment, in the North.</span></p>
<p><span style='color:black'> The blessings of the God of
the oppressed rest upon you! This is the prayer of thousands who have known you
for years, and entirely sympathize with you in one great object of your life — <i>i.
e.</i>, to arouse this nation to look the sin, the shame of slavery in the
face. We have felt the deepest interest in your plans and movements, as we have
known watched them the last four years; and we have wondered that those who
hold to armed resistance to tyrants have not more cheerfully and numerously
gathered around your standard of insurrection against slaveholders.</span></p>
<p><span style='color:black'> The government and God of
this nation daily and hourly proclaim to the people of the North, and to the
slaves of the South, their right and duty of armed resistance to slaveholders.
You hastened to obey that call to duty made by your country and your God.
Virginia herself called you to resist slaveholders, and to free the slaves, by
arms and blood, if need be. Why should Virginia hang you? You have only done
what she has exhorted you to do from the day of your birth. Why should the
North call you a "fanatic,</span><span style='color:black'>" a "maniac,"
a "ruffian," a "marauder," a "murderer," an "assassin"?
You have only done what the religion, the government and God of the nation, for
seventy years, proclaimed to be your right and your duty.</span></p>
<p><span style='color:black'> Twelve days hence, Virginia
will hang your body, but she will not hang John Brown. Better to die a traitor
to Virginia, than to live a traitor to yourself and your God. This nation of
twenty-five million will kill your body for treason against them; but had you
not done as you have, you would have died a living death for treason against
God, as he spoke<br clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
[page 5]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO JOHN
BROWN.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>to you in the depths of your own soul. Acting in obedience
to the dictates of your conscience and the behests of your God, you have
rendered yourself worthy the honor and glory of a gallows at the hands of
slaveholders, who live, not merely as pirates do, to plunder and kill, but for
a purpose far more cruel and inhuman — <i>i. e., </i>to turn human beings into
chattels.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Who would not thus render himself deserving a gallows
at such hands? The highest honor Virginia or the Union can bestow on the
champion of liberty, and the living resistant of slavery, is a gallows. From
this day, let the friends of the slave march forth to battle with slavery,
whether the conflict be on the domestic, social, religious, political or
military arena, under the symbol of the gallows, with the martyr and champion
of liberty hanging on it.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> You must die, as to your corporeal existence. Your
visible, tangible presence will no more inspire and urge us onto the
conflict; but John Brown, the <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>man, </span>the
defender of liberty, the assailant of slavery, and the friend of the slave,
will live and be with us, to inspire us, to incite us, to spur us up and lead
us on to a still closer and more resolute and deadly assault upon slaveholding.
You die, conscious that by the gallows you have triumphed, and answered the one
great end of your life more effectually than you would have done had you run
off thousands of slaves. You triumph by the gallows, not by running off slaves.
The nation is aroused. It must now meet slavery face to face, and see it in its
deformity and its results. In every department of life, it must meet it and
fight it, till it dies, and liberty is "proclaimed throughout all the
land, to all the inhabitants thereof."</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> You dear friend, whose memory will ever be precious,
as that of the slaveholder will ever be detested, have kept your anti-slavery
faith; you have fought a good fight, and may say, "Henceforth there is
laid up for me a crown of glory, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give
me in the day when the last slave shall be free. Now, Lord, lettest thou thy
servant depart in peace, for mine eyes have seen thy salvation." Millions
will follow thee, weeping, to the gallows. In pitying accents I hear thee say
to them, "Friends of the slave! weep not for me, but weep for yourselves
and your country; for in this conflict with slavery, there, is not an</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 6]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>attribute of the Almighty that can take sides, with the oppressor."
Your execution is but the beginning of that death struggle with slaveholders,
which must end in striking the last fetter from the last slave. On the
scaffold, thou wilt hear thy God, and the slave’s God, saying unto thee,
"Fear not, for I am with thee; be not dismayed, for I am thy God; I have
chosen thee; thou art my servant; I will strengthen thee; I will help thee;
yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. All they that
were incensed against thee shall be ashamed and confounded; they shall be as
nothing; they that strive with thee shall perish; the [anti-slavery] whirlwind
shall scatter them." My spirit is with thy spirit, in the dungeon and on
the scaffold.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Thine, for the slave, and against the slaveholder,
unto death,</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black'>HENRY C. WRIGHT.</span></p>
<p style='background:
white;text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>_____________</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>The </span><span style='color:
black'>above letter to John Brown, with the resolution passed at Natick,
November 20th, 1859, was forwarded to Gov. Wise, of Virginia, accompanied with
the following note, requesting him to deliver it to Capt. Brown, then in
prison, awaiting his execution:—</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Natick, </span><span style='color:black'>Mass., Nov. 21st, 1859.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Henry </span><span
style='color:black'>A. <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>Wise, </span>Governor
of Virginia:</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'> Sir,</span><span
style='color:black'>—Enclosed is a resolution adopted by the people of Natick,
Mass., the residence of the Hon. Henry Wilson. At their request, I forward it
to John Brown, with a letter to him. The resolution and letter may give peace
and satisfaction to him in his last hours. However repulsive the sentiments
may be to you, and to the people over whom you preside, they may sustain him on
the scaffold. The appeal is to your magnanimity and justice to put them into
his hands.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:
none'><span style='color:black'>You think he has done foolishly and wickedly.
We think his object has been noble, and his motives disinterested,</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 7]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO CAPT.
AVIS.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>heroic and sublime. We ask not his life, but we do ask that
you would let him know that he lives, and ever will live, in the hearts of his
long-tried personal friends, and of the friends of freedom and the enemies of
slaveholding through out the North.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Grant to us and to him this favor, and our sincere
thanks shall be yours, though our hearts must ever protest against the
injustice and political insanity that, for an effort so truly humane, grand and
heroic, shall consign his body to the gallows.</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black'>Thine,</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black'>HENRY C. WRIGHT.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> _______________</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> A <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>copy </span>of
the letter to Brown, with the resolution passed at Natick, November 20th, 1859,
was also sent to Capt. Avis, keeper of the jail in which Brown was confined,
awaiting execution, with the following note: —</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Natick, </span><span style='color:black'>Mass., Nov. 21st, 1859.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Captain </span><span
style='color:black'>Avis:</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> SIR — Pardon this intrusion by an utter stranger. God
bless you for your kindness to John Brown in these, his last hours!</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> If consistent with your feelings as a man, and your
duties as a jailor, you would oblige me by presenting the enclosed to him for
his perusal. It is a resolution adopted by the citizens of Natick, Mass., as
expressive of their views on a subject now assuming paramount importance
throughout the North. Though the sentiments of the resolution and of the
accompanying letter may be repugnant to you, it can do no harm to allow your
prisoner to read them, that he may stand on the scaffold knowing that he is
fully understood and appreciated by those who have known and sympathized with
his plans and movements the past few years, and that, through his death, he
will serve the cause he so much loves more effectually, it may be, than he
could have done by his life.</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 8]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> God bless the single-hearted, grand and kingly man! He
seems to us as one clothed with light and majesty as with a garment. Could he
but be spared, there are thousands who would cheerfully take his place, and
welcome the gallows in his stead. But he must die, as to corporeal existance,
and in his death will consist his greatest triumph.</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black'>Thine,</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black'>HENRY C. WRIGHT.</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>_____________</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO THE
RICHMOND ENQUIRER.</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Natick, </span><span style='color:black'>Mass., Nov. 21st, 1859.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>To <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>the Editor of the
Richmond Enquirer</span>: —</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'> Sir,—</span><span
style='color:black'>A large and enthusiastic meeting of the citizens of this
town (the residence of Hon. Henry Wilson) was held last evening, called to
consider the following resolution:—</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> "Whereas, Resistance to tyrants is obedience to
God; therefore,</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><i><span
style='color:black'> </span></i><span style='color:black'>"<i>Resolved, </i>That it is the right and duty of the slaves to resist their masters; and
it is the right and duty of the people of the North to incite slaves to
resistance, and to aid them in it."</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> This was adopted; and though a United States Senator
(Hon. Henry Wilson) and a United States Postmaster were present, not a
dissentient voice was raised against it.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> The resolution utters the thought of Massachusetts, of
New England, and of New York. I have reason to know it does.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><i><span
style='color:black'> Insurrection, </span></i><span style='color:black'>—
resistance on the part of the slaves and of the North against slaveholders, —
is the one idea of the people. That insurrection is the right and duty of
slaves, is the one controlling thought of the masses here. Though</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 9]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO THE
RICHMOND ENQUIRER.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>our Senators and Representatives in Congress dare not avow
this as their opinion in Washington, at home, among their constituents, they
countenance and sustain it by direct advocacy, or by silence. The North has
reason to expect it of them, the coming session, that they will openly advocate
the doctrine and practice of insurrection and resistance, as the right and duty
of the slaves of the South and of the people of the non-slave States. We have
much reason to hope that, come what may, they will do it.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> It was asserted in the above meeting, that John Brown,
at Harper’s Ferry, had truly embodied the general idea of the North, and had
done no more than his simple duty to himself, to the slave, to the slaveholder,
to his country, and his God. There are thousands among those who have known his
plans and movements the past four or five years, and have sympathized with him,
and who have known of his call, <i>as he believes, </i>from God to do a deed
that would arouse the South and the nation to consider the sin and danger of
slavery, and who have known also of his unfaltering determination to do that
deed, and strike that blow, who would now cheerfully take his place in the
dungeon and welcome the gallows in his stead, if thereby he might be spared to
lead on the mustering sons of liberty to free the slaves, and crush the power
of those who live by whipping and selling women, and by "trafficking in
slaves, and the souls of men."</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> The sin of this nation, as it was asserted in that
meeting, is to be taken away, not by Christ, but by John Brown. Christ, as
represented by those who are called by his name, has proved a dead failure, as
a power to free the slaves. John Brown is and will be a power far more
efficient. The nation is to be saved, not by the blood of Christ, (as that is
now administered,) but by the blood of John Brown, which, as administered by
Abolitionists, will prove the "power of God and the wisdom of God" to
resist slaveholders, and bring them to repentance. John Brown and him hung will
do that for the slaves and for those who enslave them which Christ and Him
crucified has never been made to do. The blood of Christ, as dispensed by the
American Church and clergy, has been the most nutritious aliment of American
slavery, and has been made to add only to its growth, and</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 10]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>THE NATICK,
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>power; but the blood of Brown, as it will be dispensed by
the friends of justice and humanity, will be its certain death, while it will
add energetic life and resistless power to liberty.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Redemption is to come to the slave and his oppressors,
not by the Cross of Christ, as it is preached among us, but by the gallows of
Brown. The Cross of Christ — as borne aloft before this nation — has been and
now is a bulwark of defence, a tower of strength, a munition of rocks, — <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>the Gibraltar </span>of American slaveholders;
the Gallows of Brown, as it will be borne aloft in front of the hosts of freedom
— the true army of the living God against slavery — does and will strike terror
to their hearts, and consternation into the ranks of slave-breeders and
slave-traders, drive them from their strongholds, and make them a hissing and
byword to all lands.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Henceforth, the slaves and their friends in the North
will know nothing but John Brown and him hung; and they have only to shriek his
name through the midnight chambers of repose of the merciless, but shivering,
cowering, slave-drivers, to carry dismay to their guilty hearts. Slaveholders,
and. their allies and abettors, have known and will continue to know, nothing
but Christ and him crucified, as they have learned Him from their slaveholding
priests and churches; and they have raised and will continue to raise Him from
the sepulcher of the dead past, only to sanctify "the sum of all villany,"
as embodied in themselves. John Brown and him hanged will be the inspiration
and slogan of the aroused slaves and their friends, till the four millions, now
held and used as chattels, bought and sold, and herded together in concubinage
as brutes, punished with death for every attempt to raise themselves to the
condition of men and women, and compelled to feel after God and immortality
amid beasts and creeping things, shall be regenerated and redeemed.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> This may seem to you <i>madness. </i>It is so, as
viewed from the slaveholding stand-point. But, it is the madness of the Good
Samaritan and of Paul; it is the madness of Jesus Christ; the madness of one
who sees and worships God in the <i>living, </i>rather than in the <i>dead; </i>in
the living slave, rather than in a dead Jesus; in a living, rather than in a
dead Christ. It is the madness of one who, on the public</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 11]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO GOV.
WISE.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>arena of life, by word and by deed, has sought to incite
the slaves and the entire nation to a living, practical resistance to slaveholders,
in every department of life, and who has taught the people of the North, for
twenty-five years, that the purest, sublimest, and most acceptable worship they
could render to the God of Justice and Liberty is — <span style='text-transform:
uppercase'>"to</span></span><span style='text-transform:uppercase'> break
every yoke, and let the oppressed go free.<span style='color:black'>"</span></span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black'>HENRY C. WRIGHT.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> _____________</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO HENRY
A. WISE,</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Written
on the day in which he killed john brown for seeking to give freedom to slaves.</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>Boston, </span><span style='color:black'>Friday, Dec. 2d, 1859.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>To <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>Henry </span>A. <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>Wise, </span>Governor of Virginia:</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'> Sir,</span><span
style='color:black'>—This is the day and this the hour in which John Brown is
being hanged by you. His dead body is now hanging on a gallows, and the eyes of
twenty-five millions of this nation are fixed upon it. You erected that
gallows, you dragged him to it, you tied that rope around his neck, you bound
his hands and his feet, you drew that cap over his eyes, and having thus
rendered him blind and helpless, you broke his neck.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> At fifteen minutes past eleven o’clock, A. M., this
day, you murdered John Brown! The entire nation saw you do it, and is a witness
against you. Yourself, Virginia, and the nation, at this hour, adjudge you a
murderer.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Why did you hang him? This is the one thought of the
nation. You must answer it. How? You yourself have pronounced him one of "the
truest, bravest, most sincere and noble" men you ever saw. You and your
accomplices in this deed of blood assure us that the nation contained not a
more "sincere, honest, heroic and conscientious man." Why, then, did
you kill him?</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 12]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Had he made an effort to rescue you, your wife and
daughters, your mother and sisters from slavery and from the vengeance, the
wrath, the rape and rapine of your slaves, would you have hung him? No. But he
sought to rescue slaves from the wrath, rape and rapine of yourself and your
fellow slave-breeders and slave-traders, and you killed him. Had he done for
you and them the very deeds for which you have hung him, you and they would
have pronounced him innocent, and crowned him with glory.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Your slaves have as good a right to enslave you, as
you have to enslave them. They have as good a right to scourge your naked back,
to drive you to unpaid toil, to sell you as a beast, to shoot you and tear you
to pieces with bloodhounds, if you run away, as you have to do these things to
them. They have as good a right to subject your wife and daughters, and your
mother and sisters, to their passions, as you have to subject theirs to yours.
They have as good a right to perpetrate robbery, murder, rape and rapine upon
you and your confederates in slave-breeding and slave-trading, and upon your
wives and children, as you have to perpetrate like outrages upon them. They
have as good a right to defend themselves and families against you and your
associates in plunder and rapine, as you have to defend your-selves against
them. You and your co-workers in crime call on the North to come down and
defend you and your families against your slaves. They come and defend you, and
you thank them. The slaves call on John Brown to come down and deliver them and
their families from your lusts and your cruelties, and defend their property,
their liberties and lives against you. You say it is the duty of the North to
defend you against the slaves. John Brown and his God told him it was his duty
to defend the slaves against you. He came to Virginia to do so, and for doing
his duty, you have hung him. Are you not a <i>murderer?</i></span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> What says Virginia of your deed? The slaves and all
the world look on the seal with which, as Governor of the State, you stamp your
letters and all public documents. What do they see? <span style='text-transform:
uppercase'>Virginia, </span>standing with one foot on the neck of a prostrate <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>slaveholder, </span>whose head she has just
cut off, and holding in her right hand the sword with which she did the deed,
all reeking with his blood. Proud and</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 13]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>LETTER TO GOV.
WISE.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>exultant she stands, and in the consciousness of having
done a meritorious deed, by ridding the world of a monster and Humanity of its
most malignant foe, she challenges the homage of all for what she has done, and
in her pride of victory exclaims: — <i>Sic semper tyrannis</i>—"Thus
always deal with slaveholders" — <i>i e.</i>, cut their heads off.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Thus Virginia, the State over which you are so proud
to preside, says to your slaves, and to all slaves in the State, and in the
United States, and in all the world<span style='text-transform:uppercase'>— </span>"<span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>Cut off your masters’ heads." </span>Not
content with mere words, she <i>pictures </i>to them her own proud achievement,
and calls on them to look at her in the very act of vanquishing her direst foe,
and of beheading him; thus <i>inciting </i>them, by an appeal to the eye as
well as to the ear, to resistance, to insurrection, and to blood.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> In her Constitution, Virginia says to her slaves;
"You are born as free as are your masters, and have the same God-given
right to your earnings, to yourselves, your wives, husbands, children and
homes as they have." She is ever sounding in the ears of the slaves —
"Give me liberty or give me death!" — "Resistance to <i>slaveholders </i>is obedience to God. " All the slaveholders and white men and women in
Virginia are ever saying to the slaves, "If you, or any others, were to do
unto us as we are daily and hourly doing unto you, we would kill, slay and
destroy you. If we were in your places, we would kill every man, woman and
child that should attempt to prevent us from getting and maintaining our
freedom." Thus your State appeals to the slaves, to <i>incite </i>them to
a bloody insurrection.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> You, sir, make this appeal to the slaves, and to the
people of the North. You flaunt this most ferocious and bloodthirsty prayer
in their faces every time you set your official seal to a commission, a
warrant, a draft, a law, or any document: By this act, your prayer to the
slave is, "Arise! and cut off the heads of all slaveholders!" — and
you invoke the North to come and help them. John Brown heard your prayer, and
the prayer of Virginia. In answer to it, he came to Harper’s Ferry. He there
sought to rescue men and women from the condition of brutes and chattels, and
to restore to them their God-given and State-acknowledged rights. He did not
aim to do the bloody deed to slaveholders which</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 14]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:black'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>you and Virginia exhorted him to do — <i>i. e., </i><span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>behead tiiem</span>! No; he was kind to the
tyrants, to his own injury. He simply sought to lead some slaves, imbruted by
you and your copartners in crime, to a land of freedom. By your official seal
and Constitution, and your historical reminiscences, you invited John Brown to
come to Harper’s Ferry and run off slaves and to kill all who should oppose
him. You and Virginia, declared that it was the right and duty of the slaves to
rise against their masters, and to gain their freedom by running away, or by
beheading their oppressors; and you told him it was his right and duty to help
them. John Brown came, with twenty-one assistants, to help him in a work which
you and all Virginia acknowledge would have been a work of love, justice, and
humanity, had it been done to free you from slavery. You mustered the State,
called on the United States to hasten to your aid, surrounded the
self-forgetting hero and his little band, and shot or hung them, deeming that
you did a brave and heroic act! You mustered the State and nation to the
defence of your property, your wives and children, your houses and lives,
against twenty-one men, who had no thought of harm to you, but simply thought
to give freedom to slaves. Such bravery must, one day, be appreciated. He was
as innocent as were Washington, Lafayette, Franklin, Jefferson, Hancock, and
Patrick Henry, and far more deserving the approval of mankind. You took him,
bound him hand and foot, blindfolded him, and then broke his neck! Yourself and
Virginia being witnesses, are you not a <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>murderer</span>?
Verily, you have your reward!</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> Why have you and Virginia hung John Brown? To defend
your property, (your slaves,) your liberty and lives, against robbery and
murder; and your wives and daughters, your mothers and sisters, against rape
and rapine. And not being able to defend yourselves, you and Virginia called on
the United States to come and help you. You do, then, hold that it is a right
and duty to shoot and hang and behead people in defence of liberty, life and
home?</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'> You, then, and Virginia, being witnesses, it is the
right and duty of the slaves to defend their earnings, their liberty and lives,
by arms and blood; and their wives and daughters against the rapine of their
masters. You and your fellow slave-breeders and slave-traders live by robbing</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:black'>[page 15]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO
GOV. WISE.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>slaves of their labor, by invading their homes, and
ravishing their wives, daughters and sisters, and plundering their nurseries
and cradles; and by murdering them, if they attempt to defend themselves and
their families. So, in the very act of hanging Brown to defend yourself, you
justify him in doing the deed for which you hang him!</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Slaves of the South! People of the North! Look at
the commission of Judge Parker, who sentenced Brown to be hung; look at the
commission of General Taliaferro, who heads the troops of Virginia and of the
United States, now surrounding the gallows on which hangs his murdered body;
open the commission of Captain Avis, the jailor, and of Sheriff Campbell, who
now stand by that murdered body! Whose name is on all these? Not that of Henry
A. Wise, Governor of Virginia. What seal is that? <span style='text-transform:
uppercase'>Virginia </span>— her foot on the prostrate and headless form of a
slaveholder!</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Once more: that <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>death-warrant </span>! Look at it! The name of Henry A. Wise is there. What is the import of
that seal? To the slaves it says: Arise! Cut off your masters' heads! Kill,
slay and destroy all who would enslave you, or molest you in your efforts to
secure your freedom!</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> To John Brown it says, </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>Hasten to Harper’s Ferry; incite the slaves to run away,
and help them to exterminate all who shall attempt to impede their exodus!</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Thus, in the very death-warrant under which Brown is
hung, you and Virginia pronounce him innocent of all evil, and justify the very
deed for which you hang him. In every way, you pronounce him guiltless. Yet,
you have hung him! Are you not a murderer? Yes! Henry A. Wise and Virginia
being witnesses. Yes!<i> </i>the heart, the conscience, the reason and history
of the nation being witnesses. Yes! by the testimony of mankind, and by the
voice of God.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Dream not that John Brown will appear in this
world’s history as </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a fool,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a fanatic,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a robber,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a ruffian,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a madman,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a monomaniac,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a marauder,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> or </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a murderer.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> His plan was formed in wisdom and righteousness; and
was executed in purest justice, goodness and benevolence, according to the
religion and government of Virginia, and of the United States; and according to
the convictions of ninety-nine out of every hundred of the people.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> What was his object? To arouse the nation to
consider the sin, the shame, and the danger of slavery, with a view</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 16]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>to its abolition. What was his plan of action? <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>Running slaves off, </span>or <i>dying </i>in
the attempt. Either would answer his purpose. This he knew, and was prepared
for the alternative. Death at your hands overtook him in the attempt, and when
in the act of breaking his neck, your word was heard throughout the land,
saying, "Surely, this is a just man!" Has he failed? Never was the
life of man — death, rather—a more complete success.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> What has been the one ruling thought of Virginia,
and of every slave State, and of the Union, the past two months? John Brown and
Harper’s Ferry! What the one spoken and unspoken word of the entire nation?
John Brown and Harper’s Ferry! The one pulsation of the nation’s heart has
been, — John Brown and him hung, <i>for seeking to free slaves! </i>John Brown, <i>the friend of the slave, </i>has edited every paper, presided over every
domestic and social circle, over every prayer, conference and church meeting,
over every pulpit and platform, and over every Legislative, Judicial and
Executive department of government; and he will edit every paper, and govern
Virginia and all the States, and preside over Congress, guide its
deliberations, and control all political caucuses and elections, for one year
to come.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> In a word, John Brown and him hung will be the one
thought of the nation; and John Brown and him hung for </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><i><span style='color:#323232'>bearing the
yoke of the oppressed as if upon his own neck,</span></i><span
style='color:black'>"</span><i><span style='color:#323232'> </span></i><span
style='color:#323232'>is now, and will continue to be, the one deep and
humiliating feeling that will fill every heart with grief, sadness, shame,
indignation and loathing. John Brown has triumphed; and that, too, according to
his expectations, in death.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> You have murdered him; but you, Virginia, and the
nation, retire from the bloody deed a thousand-fold more impotent to defend
slavery than you were before. You have murdered his body; but John Brown holds
you, Virginia, the nation, and slavery, in his firm, determined grasp, more
completely than he ever did before.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> May John Brown and him hung be to you, Virginia, and
the nation, what Christ and him crucified was to his executioner "A savor
of life unto life, and not of death unto death!</span><span style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Thine, for eternal life to freedom, and a speedy
death to slavery,</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>HENRY C.
WRIGHT.</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 17]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO
HON. HENRY WILSON,</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>touching
the natick resolution and servile resistance and insurrection.</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Boston, </span><span style='color:#323232'>Dec, 10th, 1859.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Hon. Henry Wilson</span><span
style='color:#323232'>:</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'> Sir,</span><span
style='color:#323232'>—In the Senate of the United States, you were called
upon, on Tuesday, December 6th, to give an account of yourself to the
slave-drivers for attending a meeting in Natick, called to discuss a resolution
affirming "the right and duty of slaves to resist their masters, and the
right and duty of the North to aid them." A Mr. Brown asked you, in an
insolent tone — "Were you present to countenance such a meeting?" You
explained and said, </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>It was a lecture attended generally by Democrats and
others; that nobody interrupted the proceedings; that <i>only </i>some dozen
Garrison Abolitionists Voted for the resolution, and that the great mass of the
meeting came from <i>curiosity." </i>The slave-driver who held the lash
over you said, </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>I am satisfied!</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> But another, Mr. Iverson, still flourished the lash over
you, taunting you because, "being a Senator from Massachusetts, you heard
such treasonable sentiments avowed at a public meeting, in your own town, and
did not at once rebuke them, instead of sitting and giving silent assent to
them</span><span style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Instead of rebuking those insolent lords of the lash
for presuming to dictate to you your course of conduct at home, among your
neighbors, you submissively attempted to explain to them the whys and
wherefors of your action, <i>out </i>of Congress, as if anxious to deprecate
their frowns and stripes.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> That meeting was called by public notice to discuss
the question of </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>Resistance to slaveholders as obedience to God, in
reference to John Brown at Harper’s Ferry.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> It was hoped and expected that both sides would be
heard. It was stated at the opening of the meeting, <i>you being present, </i>that
it was not a lecture, but a meeting for discussion. A prominent citizen of
Natick was appointed chairman, who</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 18]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>introduced Mr. Wright, who read the resolution and commented
on it some forty minutes, and gave way. You (if I mistake not, <i>by name) </i>were
invited, with others, to give your views for or against it, as your reason and
conscience should dictate. You declined, as was your right and duty, if your
own reason so decided. Though all would have gladly heard you, none blamed you
for your silence.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> It was urged in that meeting, that it was the right
and duty of the slaves, and of the North, to embody their resistance to
slaveholders in every department of life, wherever they deemed it right to live
— in domestic, social, ecclesiastical, political and commercial life; and that
it was the right of the slaves to defend themselves against the lusts, the
thefts, robbery and rapine of their masters, by arms and blood, in the same
sense that it is the right of the masters to defend themselves against like
outrages on the part of the slaves.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> As to military resistance, Mr. Wright denied that it
was ever <i>right </i>or <i>expedient. </i>At the same time, he said, if ever
it was right to resist tyrants by arms, it was the right and duty of the
slaves, and of the North, to resist slaveholders; that if ever one human being
deserved death at the hand of another, (which Mr. Wright denied, ) every
slaveholder deserved it at the hand of the slave; and that, according to the
religion, the government, the popular opinion and universal history of the
nation, John Brown had done right, and only his duty to God and Humanity, in
resolving to run off slaves, and to shoot down all who should oppose him in his
God-appointed work.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Three things were distinctly urged in that meeting,
as taught by the ministers, legislators, judges, presidents and governors of
the entire nation. (1) The right of slaves to run away; (2) their right to
defend themselves against all who shall attempt to molest them; (3) their right
to call on the people of the North to aid them, and the duty of the North to <i>incite </i>them to run away, and to defend them against all, whether governmental
officials or not, who shall oppose their exodus.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> It was urged upon Henry Wilson, Charles Sumner, William
H. Seward, John P. Hale, and all Northern Senators and Representatives, in and
out of Congress, as a duty, to</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 19]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO THE
HON. HENRY WILSON.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><i><span
style='color:#323232'>incite </span></i><span style='color:#323232'>slaves to
insurrection and resistance of soul against slaveholders, and all who would
enslave them. The hope was expressed that the slaveholders in Congress would
bring Northern members to the test, that they might have an opportunity to
affirm in Congress the sentiments they are known to entertain at home — <i>i. e</i>.,
that it is the right and duty of slaves to seek freedom by running away, and to
defend themselves against all who would intercept them, and that it is the
right and duty of the North to <i>incite </i>and <i>aid </i>them thus to get
their freedom.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Such sentiments were uttered in that meeting in your
hearing, and not one word was said by you or any one against them. And it was
said that your silence would be taken for consent. Why, then, do you intimate
that you were silent because you did not wish "to <i>interrupt </i>the proceeding</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>? You well know
that, had you spoken, not one would have considered it an interruption. The
feeling was that you were silent because your sense of justice, truth and
humanity forbade you to oppose the resolution. I do not believe there were ten
persons in the meeting who would have said that it is not right for slaves to
run away, or that John Brown did not do right in inciting them to run away; and
in helping to defend them against all who should oppose them.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> It was not </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>curiosity,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> but sympathy with Brown, that brought them there. It
would be difficult for you to convince your neighbors that it was not a deep
interest in the life and fate of Brown that brought you there. It is true, as
Iverson says, </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>by your silence, you gave your sanction to the
resolution. </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>You were invited to oppose it; you declined. Had you
openly and earnestly sustained it, there were not probably ten in the hall, I
doubt if there was one, who would not have admired you all the more for it.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> I allude to this meeting, not because it is worthy
of special notice in itself; for thousands like it are being held on the same
subject all over the North, in which stronger sentiments, it may be, are urged
without contradiction; but because you and other members of the Senate and of
the House are trying to throw glamour in the eyes of Southern members, and make
them think that Republicans have no sympathy with Brown and his efforts to run
off slaves, and</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 20]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>by so doing to arouse the nation to its great sin and
danger. You would have them think that </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>regret and condemnation</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> of Brown and his objects are universal at the North.
Well may they, in their terror and agony, ask you, </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>What mean those
mighty gatherings, and that tolling of bells all over the North on the day of
his execution? What mean those speeches eulogistic of Brown and his doings, and
so condemnatory of Wise, and Virginia, and their doings? What means the almost
universal applause bestowed on the remark of Ralph Waldo Emerson, the most
prominent literary man, lecturer and moral philosopher in the nation, that the
execution of the hero and saint of Harper’s Ferry, ‘Will make the gallows as
glorious as the cross’? Why was it that the seizure, trial and execution of
Brown, as a felon, swelled the Republican vote at the recent elections in the
Northern States? Will you, in the face of ten thousand facts like these, still
assure the quaking slaveholders that Republicans have no sympathy with Brown?
Well may they retort upon you —</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>You take a queer way to show it.</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Please show the doings of the Massachusetts
Legislature on the day of the execution (Friday, December 2d) to the
slaveholders, and tell them that is evidence of the truth of your remarks! What
were they? In the Senate, soon as the session was opened, Mr. Luce, of the
Island District, moved, </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>That, in view of the execution of John Brown in Virginia,
the Senate do now adjourn.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> This motion was negatived — ayes, 8; nays, 11. At 12,
noon, Mr. Luce again moved, </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>That, as it was probably about this time that John Brown
was being executed in Virginia, as an expression of sympathy for him, the
Senate do now adjourn.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> A debate ensued.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'> </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232;text-transform:
uppercase'>Mr. Odiorne, </span><span style='color:#323232'>of Suffolk,
expressed admiration for Brown as a man; declaring that he had the greatest
sympathy with him.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Mr. Walker, </span><span
style='color:#323232'>of Hampden, said he yielded to no man in sympathy for
Brown. He looked at the action of Virginia as unjust, and condemned the
unseemly haste with which the trial and execution had been hurried forward.</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Mr. Davis, </span><span
style='color:#323232'>of Bristol, did not propose to condemn the acts of Brown,
as he wished them to be judged by posterity;</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 21]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO
HON. HENRY WILSON.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>and he felt sure that <i>no more heroic or brighter name
would be found in history, than that of old Osawatomie Brown. </i>Brown, with
the Constitution of the United States in one hand, and the Golden Rule in the
other, marched straight forward and attacked the Slave Power, and he was to be
honored for it.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Mr. Walker, </span><span
style='color:#323232'>of Hampden, said he did not believe, as a lawyer, that
John Brown had been legally convicted of treason or murder. While he did not
wish to go into the slave States to run off slaves himself, yet he did not
object to others doing it in any way they saw fit.</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:
none'><span style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232;
text-transform:uppercase'>Mr. HOTCHKISS, </span><span style='color:#323232'>of
Franklin, said he was a States Rights man, in the fullest sense; but he thought
it would be as perfectly proper to adjourn out of sympathy for Brown as for any
other great and good man; and he considered John Brown <i>one of the noblest
works of God. </i>If Brown had done wrong, it was an error of the head, and not
of the heart. He held the Governor of Virginia guilty of wilful murder, and
this act would be the hanging of the Governor and of the whole State of
Virginia. Brown had not been proved guilty."</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> On this second motion, the vote was — yeas, 12;
nays, 20. Such was the spirit and action of the Senate. But one spoke
condemnatory of Brown and his deeds. Remember, the Senate is almost entirely
Republican. All who spoke in favor of Brown were such. Read the above, and then
tell the slaveholders that Republicans have no sympathy with Brown, and no
responsibility for his deeds! What will they think of you? Would that
Republicans would avow their work and glory in it; for this is the richest
fruit they have ever borne, — so far as it is theirs.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> In the House, at the opening of the session, Mr. <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>Ray, </span>of Nantucket, — moved </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>That, for the
great respect we have for the truthfulness and faith that John Brown has in man
and his religion, and the strong sympathy for the love of liberty (the avowed
principle of Massachusetts) for which he is this day to die, this House do now
adjourn.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Mr. Robinson, </span><span
style='color:#323232'>of Middleboro’, was unwilling to say John Brown was
right, though he respected him, and thought his motives good.</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 22]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Mr. Griffin, </span><span
style='color:#323232'>of Malden, said, the spirit of the order is merely a
tribute to the piety and integrity of John Brown. Let us imitate old Brown, and
attend to the business God and our constituents have given us to do. He had his
views of John Brown and of his value to the race; but this was not the place to
express them. In other places, it might be done.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> It was done in a meeting of three thousand in the
Tremont Temple, that very night, — called for the purpose of expressing
sympathy for Brown, and abhorrence of his murder by the Governor of Virginia.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> In this meeting, S. E. Sewall, a much respected
lawyer of Boston, and a leading Republican, said: — </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>Under these
circumstances, whether John Brown was technically guilty of any offence against
the laws of Virginia or not, he had not had a fair trial, and his execution is
therefore <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>butchery </span>and <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>murder, </span>and the Judge and Governor were
only the tools of Virginia in carrying out this <span style='text-transform:
uppercase'>judicial assassination. </span>As it is, Governor Wise seems likely
to be pilloried by history at the side of Pontius Pilate, as the man who shed
innocent blood in violation of his own convictions of right, to satisfy the
clamor of a deluded populace, crying, "Crucify him! crucify him!"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Mr. Griffin, at the same meeting, said: "He
undertook to defend Pontius Pilate against a comparison with Governor Wise. The
chairman should apologize to the memory of Pontius Pilate for the comparison.</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> (Uproarious
applause.)</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> With such facts before them, what must the
slaveholding Senators think of your assertion, that Brown and his deeds excite
only "regret and condemnation" among Republicans? Brown, Iverson,
Mason, and all the Senators from the South, justly tremble for themselves,
their wives and their children. They frankly declare to you and to the nation
their terror and agony. They say the North sympathizes with Brown and his
deeds, and in so doing seeks to incite insurrection, rebellion, and resistance
among their slaves. It is true. Their fears are well founded. Why seek to lull
them into security till the storm shall burst upon them in a way they dream not
of, — as it surely will, and deluge their homes and their plantations with
blood, unless they escape</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 23]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO
HON. HENRY WILSON</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>by repentance and emancipation? Why should you seek to
quiet their guilty consciences and awakened terrors?</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> The masses of the North are in sympathy with Brown
and his deeds. In no State is this more true than in that which you represent.
In no place in the State is that sympathy more vital than in your own immediate
neighborhood; as if your presence there had only tended to kindle the flame and
keep it blazing.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Millions in the North rejoice that the slaveholders
in Congress bring you and all your associates in politics to this one test, — <i>i.e.</i>, <i>Is resistance to slaveholders the right and duty of the slaves and of the
North</i>? Will you and your fellow-Republicans help to kill the slaves if they
attempt to defend themselves, their wives and children against the rape,
rapine, robbery and murder perpetrated on them, daily, by their masters, or
will you side with the slaves against the masters? Was John Brown a traitor
against God and humanity? Henry Wilson and Charles Sumner will never say he was.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Slaveholders may well turn pale with terror. As
Iverson and Mason say, "they sleep on the brink of a volcano.</span><span
style='color:black'> "</span><span style='color:#323232'> They know they
deserve death, <i>on their own showing, </i>at the hands of their slaves. They
feel, hourly, their victim’s knife at their throats; his dagger at their
hearts, and his torch at their dwellings; and their wives and daughters outraged
by those whose wives and daughters, mothers and sisters, they themselves have
ravished. If they will persist in turning men and women into brutes and
chattels, they must abide the results of their inhuman deeds. Their reward is
sure and terrible. The bayonets of the North will not much longer defend them.
I would that you and your associates in Congress were as true to liberty as the
South is to slavery; that you would, in every department of life, as truly
embody resistance to slavery, as they do resistance to liberty. Then this </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>irrepressible
conflict</span><span style='color:black'>" </span><span style='color:#323232'>would
soon be ended; and the <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>Higher Law </span>be
the <i>only </i>rule of action, <i>in </i>Congress as well as <i>out </i>of it.
For the Constitution and the enactments of Congress are but so much blank
paper, and will be set at nought as such, when they are opposed to that <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>Higher Law </span>which enjoins it upon slaves
to escape from slavery, and upon the North to incite and help them to escape.
If this be trea-</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 24]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>son — as it unquestionably is — against the <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>Lower Law, </span>and you and your
fellow-Republicans undertake to hang all such traitors, as you say you will,
rest assured you will have enough to do. You must, indeed, become a <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>common </span>hangman.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Judged from the stand-point of the religion and
government of this nation, the design of John Brown was founded in the deepest
wisdom and benevolence, and executed with consummate skill, and unrivalled
heroism, integrity, and self-forgetfulness. His life was a complete success;
his death, an unparalleled and most honorable triumph. He sought to arouse the <i>soul </i>of this nation, the intellect, the conscience, the sympathy and will, to a
state of resistance, rebellion, insurrection against slaveholders, and against
every law, Constitution, Bible or religion that sanctions and sustains them in
turning men, women, and children into beasts and chattels. He sought to
accomplish this chief end of his existence by running off slaves or by death.
He has triumphed by the gallows! The blood of John Brown appeals to God and
Humanity against slaveholders and their confederates in crime. To that appeal,
the heart of this nation and of the civilized world will respond, in one defiant
shout, </span><span style='color:black;text-transform:uppercase'>"Resistance
to slaveholders is obedience to God."</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:#323232'>HENRY C. WRIGHT.</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 25]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO WM.
LLOYD GARRISON,</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Touching
rebellion and insurrection against slaveholders.</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Boston, </span><span style='color:#323232'>Dec. 11th, 1859.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232;text-transform:uppercase'>Dear Garrison</span><span
style='color:#323232'>:</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> I use the words resistance, rebellion, and
insurrection, because these alone can truly express those mental, social and
moral conditions which God and Humanity enjoin in regard to slaveholders.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Thirty years ago, the soul of this nation was in a
condition of cowering subserviency to that power which turns every sixth man,
woman and child into </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>a chattel personal</span><span style='color:black'>"
r</span><span style='color:#323232'>eason, conscience, sympathy and will had
succumbed, and apparently had lost the capacity to rise in rebellion against
it. Insurrection against slave-breeders seemed not only an impossibility, but
an immorality; a kind of blasphemy against what was considered a God-ordained
and time-honored practice. Slavery was inter-blended with all domestic, social,
ecclesiastical, political and commercial relations, and defended by the
religious, governmental and military power. Wherever men and women lived, there
they embodied a living submission to slaveholders. Resistance, or insurrection,
against them, in any relation, in thought, feeling, word or deed, was counted a
felony against the peace of society, against the Union, and its sovereign
power.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Four millions of slaves, this day, are, by reason of
the influence that is brought to bear upon them, made to believe and feel that
the greatest sin they can commit, the sin most sure to make them liable to the
vengeance and lash of their oppressors, and to all "the miseries of this
life, to the wrath of God and the pains of hell forever,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> is that of
insurrection and resistance against slaveholders, in thought, word or deed.
Their will-power to resist is gone. They have <i>no will </i>of their own! To
have a will, a conscience, or an aversion to their enslavement, and to express
it in word or deed, instantly subjects them to the lash or the gallows. The
will of the tyrant is their only legalized and baptized rule of life.</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 26]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Thirty years ago, the entire North, in its domestic,
social, religious, political, commercial and military life, was in the same
state of abject subserviency to slaveholders. The people seemed not only to
have lost the power to resist them, but actually to feel honored that
slave-breeders and slave-catchers counted them worthy to do their work of shame
and infamy. The very life of their souls to resist seemed to have become
extinct. So far as insurrection against them was concerned, the nation was dead
and buried in an ignominious grave of servile submission.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> You, in 1830, sounded the tocsin of insurrection and
revolution against slaveholders, and all that sustains them. In the name of
God and Humanity, you proclaimed war against the nation’s protected and
colossal crime. You said that you would be heard; that you would not yield;
that you would never turn back; that you or slavery must die. You struck for <i>immediate,
unconditional </i>abolition. What was the first work to be done? To arouse the
people of the North, and place them in an attitude of insurrection against
slaveholders, in thought, feeling, word, and deed; to incite them to
irreconcilable hostility to "the highest kind of theft, <i>i. e., </i>man-stealing,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> and to the
injustice, robbery, rape and rapine inherent in slavery. The reason,
conscience, moral and social nature and will of the North were to be quickened
and brought into a state of inexorable, undying rebellion against slaveholders, <i>as such. </i>The people <i>of </i>the North, in the family and social
circle, in the church, at the ballot-box, in the market, and in all places
where they think it their right and duty to live, were to be made to regard and
treat slaveholders as they do burglars, thieves, robbers, murderers, midnight
assassins, and ravishers of helpless innocence, and to feel that, as such, they
have no right to breathe God’s air, to see his light, or to <i>live </i>in his
universe; that, <i>as slaveholders, </i>they have no rights which <i>any man </i>is
bound to respect. This was the first work to be done. By appeals to reason,
conscience, pity, and sympathy, made through the press and the living lecturer
and speaker, despite the efforts of the Church and State to lull their souls to
quietness, life was infused into multitudes in behalf of the slave.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> You called on the people of the North to gird on the
armor of God against slaveholders. Resistance, rebellion,</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 27]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO WM.
LLOYD GARRISON.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>insurection against them, and all that sustains them, in
sentiment, in principle, in spirit, word and deed, was the watchword of the
Anti-Slavery Movement. Insurrection was couched in the very name by which the
enterprise was christened, <i>i. e., </i><span style='text-transform:uppercase'>anti-slavery. </span>An Anti-Slavery <i>soul, </i>and an Anti-Slavery <i>life, </i>were to be
created in the North; which meant a soul and a life, an interior and exterior
life, rebellious and insurrectionary against slaveholders. The souls of the
Northern people were to be aroused to cease to side with the oppressors against
the oppressed, (as they had ever done,) and to yield up reason and conscience,
and all their sympathy, and all their powers of soul and body, to the slaves
against their enslavers. Two positions were established: (1) That it is the
right and duty of the enslaved and the free to resist all attempts to hold and
use human beings as chattels. (2) That it is our right and duty to use all such
means to free the slaves as we would use to free ourselves, if we were slaves.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> These two positions were, and have been to this day,
maintained by you, by Adin Ballou, by Wendell Phillips, and by all
Abolitionists. "Incite the slaves to escape from slavery, and defend them
against the rape, rapine, and atrocities of those who would enslave them, by
the same weapons with which you would defend yourselves, your wives and
children. Resist slave-catchers, in behalf of the <i>black </i>slaves, by the
same means that you would use in behalf of <i>white </i>slaves. </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>This has been the
uniform teaching of Abolitionists from the beginning. Every paper, every
letter, every speech, every prayer, every exhortation, has been designed to
bring the souls of the people into a state of insurrection against
slaveholders, and an argument to induce them to use all such means as they
would use, or wish others to use, for their own protection.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'> <span
style='color:#323232'>As to <i>armed </i>or <i>military </i>resistance to
slaveholders, or to <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>any </span>evil-doers,
my soul has ever resisted it, and ever must, as inexpedient, unjust and
inhuman. Life or liberty can never be protected by killing men. <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>MAN-KILLING </span>is the basis of <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>MAN-STEALING. </span>Human liberty can never
be made sacred by the taking of human life. Respect for liberty can never
result from contempt for life. Liberty will be safe, only as life is
reverenced. The inviolability of life is the only foundation of absolute safety
to liberty.</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 28]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Such has been my cherished conviction for thirty
years, as it has been yours. It is because human governments are founded on the
right to kill men, in violence and murder, and on that revengeful doctrine of
"blood for blood," that I have never taken any part in their
administration, by voting, or otherwise. I have no more respect for the
authority of the General or State governments, than for that of the wolf or
hyena. To me, they are all, as now constituted, but </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>covenants with
Death, and agreements with hell.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> These governments, in their essential spirit, principles
and practices, are a deliberate and formal rejection of those sacred and only
truths that are absolutely conservative of </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>Life, Liberty and Happiness,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> <i>i. e.</i>, — </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>Love your enemies,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>Forgive as you
would be forgiven,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>Return to no man evil for evil, but overcome evil with
good.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> They all ignore the spirit and life of the Martyr of Calvary. And the one deep
anguish of my heart, as I look on the martyr of Harper’s Ferry, is, that his
hands, ever so faithful to liberty, are stained with a brother’s blood.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> But while this is </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>the way, the truth and the life</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> to me, ninety and
nine out of every hundred of the enslaved and enslavers. North and South,
politicians and priests, <i>in their own defence, </i>insist that <i>armed </i>resistance
to slaveholders is obedience to God; and that it is the right and duty of the
enslaved to defend themselves, their wives and daughters, against the
cruelties, the rape and rapine of their enslavers, by arms and blood; and to
kill, slay and destroy all who invade their homes, to drug the objects of their
affection to the auction-block, to be sold like brutes. In their own case, they
hold that, if they were slaves, it would be the right and duty of John Brown,
and of all freemen, to help them to insurrection. I hold them responsible to
their own accepted laws of life, to use the same means to defend the Southern
slaves, and their wives and children, which they would use, or wish others to
use, to defend themselves. I would say to the people of the North: </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>Go, <i>incite </i>slaves
to run away, and guide them on their way to Canada, as John Brown proposed to
do; and if slaveholders or their ecclesiastical and political minions attempt
to oppose them, and to re-enslave them, defend them, as Brown proposed to do,
by the same weapons you would use were you, and your</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 29]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO WM.
LLOYD GARRISON.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>wives and children, the fugitives. Rouse the slaves to
rebellion and insurrection, and put into their hands <i>only </i>such weapons
as you, would use in your own behalf, were you insurgent slaves. If you deem it
wrong to use deadly weapons to defend yourselves, do not defend the slaves in
that way; but if you would deem the torch and sabre justifiable means of
insurrection in your own behalf, were you slaves, use the same in behalf of
Southern slaves.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> But the people of the North have been in sympathy
with, and have plighted their faith and their power to, the enslavers, rather
than the enslaved. While, in every possible way, from the pulpit, the platform,
the press, they proclaimed armed resistance and armed insurrection against
slaveholders as the right and duty of all <i>white </i>people, they have urged
a meek, humble, unreasoning, uncomplaining and abject submission on the part of
the <i>black </i>slaves. The <i>white </i>slaveholders perpetrate robbery, rape
and rapine upon <i>black </i>slaves and their wives and daughters, and if the
black slaves strike those <i>white </i>ravishers dead, Edward Everett, and the
nation, sustain these Christian and Anglo-Saxon man-stealers in their
"midnight and merciless atrocities, and their abominations, not to be
named by <i>Christian </i>lips to <i>Christian </i>ears,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> and hang and
shoot the outraged slaves for resisting them. But, if the black slaves return
to these white plunderers and ravishers of their homes, <i>according to their
deeds, </i>instantly Edward Everett begins to talk of </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>midnight burnings,
wholesale massacres, merciless tortures, and deeds too unutterably atrocious
for the English language.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> Before God and eternal justice and truth, whatever it is
right for the <i>white </i>enslavers to do to <i>black </i>slaves and their
wives, daughters, mothers and sisters, it is right for <i>black </i>slaves to
do to their <i>white </i>enslavers and their wives, daughters, mothers and
sisters. Whatever the people of the North would help the <i>white </i>slaveholders
to do to their <i>black </i>slaves, they should, and will, one day, help the <i>black </i>slaves to do to the <i>white </i>slaveholders.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Let the North cut loose from their bloody alliance
with slaveholders, imitate John Brown, and form a league of offence and defence
with the slaves against their enslavers. Let them do in defence of freedom to
the slaves whatever they would do in defence of their own freedom. Let the</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 30]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>North use all their power to give liberty to the slaves,
which they would use to secure freedom to themselves. If they would use the
torch and sabre to obtain and secure freedom to themselves, let them use the
same weapons to give freedom to the slaves of Virginia.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Now they are politically, not morally, bound to aid
slaveholders in their unprovoked, inhuman and murderous assault upon the
slaves and their defenceless wives and children, and to shoot down the slaves
if they, attempt resistance or insurrection. Let them from this hour make an
everlasting covenant with the slaves and the slaves’ God, to <i>incite </i>and <i>aid </i>them to rebellion against man-stealers; and incite them to insurrection,
and defend them against all who would crush them back into slavery, by all such
means as they would use to defend themselves. This is what God and Humanity demand
of every man and woman in the North, and in the world.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Subjection to an outward, arbitrary authority is the
basis of chattel slavery, and of all oppression. The power of the Church and
State, the consuming wrath, the lash, the bowie-knife, the revolver, the rifle
and bloodhound of slaveholders, and their allies, and the vengeance and terror
of an Almighty God, are brought to bear on the ignorant, cowering slaves, to
crush out the last vestige of their manhood, and bring them into an
unresisting, unreasoning, humble submission to that arbitrary, bloody power
that enslaves them. The souls of the slaves fall prostrate, having no will of
their own, and deeming every rebellion, insurrectionary thought and feeling, a
crime deserving scourging and death, and eternal banishment from God and
heaven. The mission of anti-slavery is to inspire them with rebellious thoughts
and feelings, and incite them to insurrectionary words and deeds (not deeds of
violence and blood) against their inhuman and godless masters.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> So that same power of Church and State, the fierce
wrath and threatened vengeance of slave-breeders, and the entire power of the
government and religion of the nation, and the terrors of death, judgment and
eternity, have been brought to bear on the people of the North, to compel them
into humble subserviency to the Slave Power. You and your coadjutors have long
labored to incite the cowering and</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 31]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>LETTER TO WM.
LLOYD GARRISON.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>crushed souls of the people of the North to a living,
practical insurrection against that power; to arouse them to thoughts and
feelings, to words and deeds of undying hostility against all constitutions and
bibles, all religions and governments, and all men and women, that enslave
human beings, or that teach submission on the part of slaves to the power that
enslaves them.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> The prestige of the words </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>rebellion</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> and "insurrection,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>rebel</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> and </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>insurgent,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>treason</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> and </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>traitor,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> for purposes of
oppression, as a means to palsy and cower the soul into subserviency to
slaveholders, and to constitutions, laws, bibles and religions that sustain
them, was fast disappearing before the anti-slavery movement. The gallows and
blood of Brown have about dissolved the charm altogether. Rebellion,
insurrection and treason against slaveholders, and every authority and
influence that sustains them, are fast coming to be expressive of our highest
allegiance to God and Humanity. They are coming to be consecrated and holy
words, and significant only of justice, honor, fidelity, love, and of whatever
is beautiful, grand and heroic in human nature.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> The whole power of the Church is wielded to overawe
the souls of the people, and bring them submissively and abjectly to yield to
the authority of their creed, and without one resisting or rebellious thought
or feeling to do its behests, however inhuman they may be, even to turning men
and women into chattels, or hanging them on a gallows. The Bible, the only
authority in religious faith and practice, and insurrection against it a sin
unto eternal death — this is the sentiment and history of the American Church.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> The power of the Union and General Government, and
of the politics and military of the country, is brought to bear to subject the
people to the authority of their Constitution, their political creed; and
rebellion, insurrection, treason against that in thought, feeling, word or
deed, is counted the sin of sins, and to be expiated only on the gallows; the
Constitution the only authority in social, commercial, civil and political
life; and resistance and treason against it a sin unto death! For resisting
that authority, by attempting to give freedom to those who by it were
pronounced slaves, John Brown is hung, and a national gallows awaits all who
have enough justice, humanity and piety to imitate him.</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 32]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>THE NATICK
RESOLUTION.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Edward Everett dooms slaves to death, who dare to
resist the </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>midnight and merciless atrocities, the wholesale murders,
and the abominations not to be spoken by Christian lips to Christian ears,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> that are
perpetrated upon them and their wives and children by Christian hands; that
pimp and pander to the lusts of slave-breeders, glorifies them for committing
those atrocities, </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>too unutterable for the English language,</span><span
style='color:black'> "</span><span style='color:#323232'>upon the slaves
and their helpless families, but hangs the slaves and their friends who incite
and aid them to resistance and defence!</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Abject, humble, uncomplaining submission to
external, arbitrary authority, is the law and gospel of Church and State; even
when that authority counts manhood and womanhood, female virtue, conjugal
fidelity, the purity of marriage, and the sanctity of parentage, crimes
punishable with death.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> God and Humanity call the slaves of the South and
the people of the North to insurrection and treason against a power so Satanic
in spirit, and so rapacious, so libidinous, so malignant and murderous in
practice. <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>insurrection of soul </span>against
slaveholders, the right and duty of slaves and of the North — this is the first
step; then, the means of resistance are to be such, only, as we would use in
our own behalf, were we slaves.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> The slaveholders have hung John Brown. Let them be
assured there are tens of thousands of John Browns now hovering on the confines
of slavery, ready to enter in and scatter themselves all over the South, to
incite slaves to insurrection against their masters, and to guide them on
their way to Canada, bidding defiance to slaveholders, and all slaveholding and
slave-catching constitutions and laws; being ready to meet the alternative of
a slaveholder’s gallows. That instrument of torture has lost its terrors. <span
style='text-transform:uppercase'>it is the right and duty of slaves to gain and
defend their freedom. it is the right and duty of the people of th north to
incite and help them to freedom. </span>This is becoming a paramount duty in
the estimation of thousands, and no terrors of the slaveholder’s wrath and
vengeance will prevent them from doing it.</span></p>
<p align="right" style='text-align:right;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:#323232'>HENRY C. WRIGHT.</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 33]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>APPENDIX</span><span
style='color:#323232'>.</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'>___________</p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>SPEECH OF
HON. HENRY WILSON,</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>At an Anti-Slavery Festival held in Cochituate Hall,
Boston, on the evening of January 24th, 1851, to celebrate the completion of
the twentieth year of the existence of "The Liberator."</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='color:#323232'>From the Boston
"Liberator" of Jan. 31, 1851.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>MR. <span style='text-transform:uppercase'>CHAIRMAN, AND
LADIES AND GENTLEMEN:</span></span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> I suppose the reason why you, Mr. Chairman, who have
the good fortune to preside over this joyous festival of the friends of
liberty, assembled here to-night, have called upon me, is because I have the
good fortune, or perhaps the misfortune, to preside over one branch of the </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>assembled wisdom</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> of the </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>great and General
Court.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> On taking the chair, sir, you quoted the words of the great dramatist, that </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>some men were born
great, some achieved greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them.</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'> Now, sir,
surrounded as you are, on either hand, by men who </span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>were born great,</span><span
style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>and by men who
have </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:#323232'>achieved
greatness,</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span style='color:
#323232'> I am surprised, and this audience will be more surprised, that you
should call upon one who has simply had </span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'>greatness thrust upon</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> him, to mar the festivities of this occasion, by
inflicting a speech upon those who have been charmed by the glowing eloquence
of the gifted and brilliant orators [Mr. Thompson and Mr. Phillips] who have
addressed us. Our friend Phillips said, that he wished "to have a little
scream from every one.</span><span style='color:black'>"</span><span
style='color:#323232'> You must, sir, have acted upon that hint in calling upon
me. [Laughter.]</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 34]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>APPENDIX</span><span
style='color:#323232'>.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> At a late hour this afternoon, I learned that the
friends of freedom were to have a meeting here to-night, in honor of William
Lloyd Garrison. I am here to-night, sir, to express my love for the great cause
your guest has advocated for twenty years through the columns of the <i>Liberator, </i>[hear! hear!] and my profound admiration and respect for his
self-sacrificing and unfaltering devotion to it, amid obloquy and reproach. It
is my misfortune, perhaps, to differ from him on many important questions.
Differing, however, from him as I do, I have ever honored him for his
unshrinking zeal and unwavering fidelity to the cause of liberty and progress.
[Applause.] For twelve years I have read the <i>Liberator; </i>and, sir, if I
love liberty, and loathe slavery and oppression, if I entertain a profound
regard for the rights of man all over the globe, I owe it, in a great degree,
to the labors of William Lloyd Garrison. [Prolonged applause.] I am not ashamed
to acknowledge the debt of gratitude I owe him for his labors in behalf of
three millions of men, and no fear of censure, ridicule or reproach shall deter
me from expressing, on all fit and proper occasions, my respect and admiration
for the man. [Applause.] Sir, the unceasing labor he has given to the cause of
liberty and humanity for these twenty past years will cause his name and his
memory to be cherished and revered ages after the stone which shall lie upon
his grave shall crumble and mingle with the dust. [Hear! hear!] And when that
great day comes, as surely it will come, — for God reigns, — when three
millions of men, held in slavery in this republic, shall be free, the friends
of liberty will acknowledge, what many now deny, the patriotism of William
Lloyd Garrison. [Cheers.]</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> I came here, also, to-night, sir, to listen to the
voice of one of the most gifted orators of the old world, whose eloquent tones
are still ringing in our ears. You have alluded, Mr. Chairman, to the jealous
feelings of our countrymen to foreign interference. Sir, I am an American —
with American sympathies, feelings, and prejudices. I love my country, with
all her faults, with a supreme devotion. I go for my country now, at all times,
and on all occasions, and in every contest. Sir, I love not England. [Sensation.]
I am not dazzled by her splendor or awed by her power, although the sun never
goes down on her possessions, and her</span></p>
<br
clear="all" style='page-break-before:always' />
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 35]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>SPEECH OF
HON. HENRY WILSON.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>flag floats over her citadels of power in the four
quarters of the globe, and upon every sea. But, sir, I honor the friends of
liberty and progress in England, whose efforts for the last thirty years, in
the cause of human progress, have never been surpassed by the efforts of any
class of men in any portion of the civilized world. [Hear! hear!] Yes, sir, I
undertake to say here, to-night, that in no part of the world, and in no age of
the world, and by no race in the world, have greater efforts been made for
human progress and human liberty, than have been made during the last thirty
years in Old England. [Applause.] Her reformers have achieved the most
brilliant victories. Among all her brilliant intellects, who have linked their
names with the great ideas of Progress, no name shines more brightly than the
name of George Thompson. [Applause.] As an American, loving the good name of
my native land, jealous of its honor and its fame, I have felt the deepest
mortification, that in the city of Boston, in old Faneuil Hall, the man who has
stood up fearlessly in England and supported American principles, and defended
the American name, should be received by men, calling themselves American
Democrats, with ridicule and denunciations. [Applause.] His name is
indissolubly linked with those great measures of reform which have for their
object the elevation and improvement of the people of England. His voice has
been raised in behalf of the millions of British India; and for West India
emancipation,—the noblest act in the annals of British history,— his labors
were freely given. His labors have been such, since he left our shores fifteen
years ago, as should have given him, in Faneuil Hall and every where, a warm
and hearty welcome. [Applause.] And, sir, as an American, loving my country,
cherishing the great fundamental principles on which its institutions are
founded, I come here to-night, and give him the same cordial welcome to
America, that I would extend to the men who have nobly struggled on the lost
fields where Liberty has been cloven down. [Sensation.] And as he may be called
upon in a few months to leave us, I trust that when he goes, there will be
none, at least in Massachusetts, who will censure him for laboring to blot from
our country the sin and shame of slavery. [Much enthusiasm.]</span></p>
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<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'>[page 36]</span></p>
<p align="center" style='text-align:center;background:white;
text-autospace:none'><span style='font-size:14.0pt;color:#323232'>APPENDIX.</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Sir, allusion has been made to-night to the small
beginnings of the great anti-slavery movement, twenty years ago, when the <i>Liberator </i>was launched upon the tide. These years have been years of devotion and of
struggles unsurpassed in any age or in any cause. But, notwithstanding the
treachery of public men, notwithstanding the apostacy for which the year 1850
was distinguished, I venture to say, that the cause of liberty is spreading
throughout the whole land, and that the day is not far distant when brilliant
victories for freedom will be won. We shall arrest the extension of slavery
and rescue the Government from the grasp of the Slave Power. We shall blot out
slavery in the National Capital. We shall surround the slave States with a
cordon of free States. We shall then appeal to the hearts and consciences of
men, and in a few years, notwithstanding the immense interests combined in the
cause of oppression, we shall give liberty to the millions in bondage. [Hear!
hear!] I trust that many of us will live to see the chain stricken from the limbs
of the last bondman in the republic! But, sir, whenever that day shall come,
living or dead, no name connected with the anti-slavery movement will be dearer
to the enfranchised millions than the name of your guest — William Lloyd
Garrison. [Prolonged applause.]</span></p>
<p style='background:white;text-autospace:none'><span
style='color:#323232'> Such were the sentiments of Henry Wilson in 1851.
Are they not his sentiments today?</span></p>
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<p><a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1" title="" id="_ftn1"><span
class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span class="MsoFootnoteReference"><span
style='font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"'>[1]</span></span></span></a> <span style='font-size:10.0pt'>This militant antislavery tract was
published immediately prior to John Brown’s execution in December 1859. Its
author, Rev. Henry Clarke Wright (1797-1870), had been associated with
Garrissonian abolitionism for many years and contributed a column to <i>The
Liberator</i>. Faced with the imminent execution of Brown, however, Wright’s
original pacifism gave way to calls for the violent end of slavery. In this
all, Wright joined the rising militancy of the abolitionist movement, endorsed
by figures such as Emerson, Thoreau, Wendell Phillips, Lysander Spooner, James
Redpath, and others. </span></p>
<p><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> Wright had
been one of the leading organizational figures of New England abolitionism for
many years. He was active during the 1830s in the American Peace Society and
later in the New England Non-Resistance Society, and influenced William Lloyd
Garrison’s belief in pacifism. See Merle E. Curti, “Non-Resistance in New
England,” <i>New England Quarterly</i> (1929) 34-57. Although an ordained
minister, Wright was vehemently anti-clerical and Frederick Douglass denounced
him as an “infidel.” Wright spent 1842-1847 as a lecturer in Europe, and he
wrote a pacifist text entitled <i>Defensive War Proved to Be a Denial of
Christianity and of the Government of God </i>(1846). Not only was Wright
involved in antislavery and pacifist politics, he was also an early and radical
advocate of women’s rights, children’s rights, and new roles for men. </span></p>
<p><span style='font-size:10.0pt'> <i>The Natick
Resolution</i>, one of many tracts Wright published over his lifetime, dates
from a November 20, 1859, public meeting in the town of Natick, Massachusetts.
The meeting resolved “<span style='color:black'>That it is the right and duty
of the slaves to resist their masters, and the right and duty of the people of
the North to incite them to resistance, and to aid them in it.” US senator
Henry Wilson was in attendance at the meeting and did not object to the
resolution, on point on which he later defended himself on the US Senate
floor. The tract is composed of a series of letters from Wright to John Brown,
Virginia governor Henry Wise, William Lloyd Garrison, and others. </span></span></p>
<p class="MsoFootnoteText"><span style='color:black'> Wright’s
rhetoric calls for complete resistance, in every form, to the institution of
slavery. John Brown symbolizes the heroicism of such resistance. At one
point, Wright compares Brown to Christ and finds Brown superior, writing “The
sin of this nation, as it was asserted in that meeting, is to be taken away,
not by Christ, but by John Brown. Christ, as represented by those who are
called by his name, has proved a dead failure, as a power to free the slaves.
John Brown is and will be a power far more efficient.” (9) <i>The Natick
Resolution</i> was well-recognized immediately prior to the Civil War as a
leading document of militant abolitionism.</span></p>
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